Similarities and Differences in Two Romantic Poems

William Wordsworth was born on April 7, 1770 in Cockermouth, Cumberland. Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born on October 21, 1772 in Devonshire, England. In 1798, Wordsworth and Coleridge anonymously published a collaborated collection of poems called Lyrical Ballads together they emerged as two prestigious figures of British Romanticism. Among the most notable poems published in the Lyrical Ballads are Wordsworth’s Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey and Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. These two great poems were simultaneously published in the first edition of Lyrical Ballads and both embody a common theme: the lesson to appreciate nature, passed down through an elders’ tale of experience, to the naïve young. Although these two works embody a common theme, they signify two opposing views of nature within the theme itself.

Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner are both lyric poems portraying a narrative, personal experience with nature. In both poems, the elder of the speakers reveal how they have come to appreciate nature to the younger speakers in the poems. In Lines the elder is the speaker/Wordsworth, and the naïve youth is his sister. The speaker reveals that in his youth he too initially was unable to appreciate nature. This is depicted in the third stanza:

And so I dare to hope

Though changes, no doubt, from what I was, when first

I came among these hills (65-67)

This overwhelming and animalistic sensation felt in the speaker’s youth is further expressed in the next few lines of the third stanza: “The coarser pleasures of my boyish days / And their glad animal movements all gone by” (73-74). In the last stanza of Lines, the theme becomes truly evident ...

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... the last few stanzas of Part VII:

He prayeth best, who loveth best

All things both great and small;

For the dear God who loveth us,

He made and loveth all (614-617)

William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge both emerged as two prestigious poets. Each of their poems, Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, helped to advance British Romanticism. Similar to many other romantic poems, Lines and The Rime embody a theme of appreciating nature, which is passed down through an elders’ tale of experience, to the naïve young. Both poems despite their differing approaches/attitudes towards nature, use the techniques of sound (internal rhyme), alliteration and vivid imagery to help preserve this theme of natural appreciation, and wisdom of aging versus the inexperienced youth, found prominently in British Romantic works.